Dan Savage: Anti-gay activist Josh Duggar deserved to be outed as love cheat
Gay rights campaigner Dan Savage has claimed that anti-gay activist Josh Duggar deserved to be outed as an adulterer.
Josh Duggar, the former executive director of the Family Research Council – an anti-gay hate group that works to oppose LGBT rights – was among those named when user data from affair website Ashley Madison leaked yesterday.
Duggar also appeared in TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting – but the TLC show was pulled off air earlier this year when an unsealed police report revealed that Duggar was reported to have sexually assaulted girls, including some of his own sisters, years prior.
Columnist Dan Savage did not mince his words when discussing the new revelation, writing: “Outing someone for their private sexual conduct—even if everyone agrees that it’s wrong—is a brutal tactic that should be reserved for brutes. Who’s a legitimate target for outing?
“People who accuse others of trying to destroy their marriages, fundamentalists who who quite literally demonize other people, and who then go back to their apartments in Washington, DC, and cheat on their spouses are political hypocrites and legitimate targets for outing. People like this guy.”
Speaking to MSNBC, he added: “Josh Duggar is not a private citizen. He is a public figure who has benefited politically and financially from attacking other people for their sex lives and marriages… so his morality his germaine.
“His hypocrisy makes him a legitimate target for an outing of this sort.”
Since the data was released, Duggar released a statement calling himself “the biggest hypocrite ever”.
He said: “While espousing faith and family values, I have secretly over the last several years been viewing pornography on the internet and this became a secret addiction and I became unfaithful to my wife.
“I am so ashamed of the double life that I have been living and am grieved for the hurt, pain and disgrace my sin has caused my wife and family, and most of all Jesus and all those who profess faith in Him.
“I brought hurt and a reproach to my family, close friends and the fans of our show with my actions that happened when I was 14-15 years old, and now I have re-broken their trust.”
He continued: “The last few years, while publicly stating I was fighting against immorality in our country, I was hiding my own personal failings.
“As I am learning the hard way, we have the freedom to choose to our actions, but we do not get to choose our consequences. I deeply regret all hurt I have caused so many by being such a bad example.
“I humbly ask for your forgiveness. Please pray for my precious wife Anna and our family during this time.”
